WTF Is It Now?!?

Happy Mothers Day, and Knights Templars Memorial Day. In 1310 54 Knights Templars were burned at the stake as heretics in France. Established during the Crusades to protect pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land, this military order came into increasing conflict with Rome until Clement V officially dissolved it in 1312 at the Council of Vienna.


It's one of those cool, dark, rainy mornings that make you just want to stay in bed, reading old National Lampoons and drinking Irish coffees. Instead, I found this:

Recalling a meeting last year with Dick Cheney, Sen. Barbara Boxer said, "You know what ['dick'] told us when we complained? He said, 'You people use too much energy.' Well, he didn't know what he was talking about."

Rep. Henry Waxman added: "The reality now that we have seen these Enron memos makes it clear that California consumers were robbed last year by the big energy companies.... It is obvious to me that what we had was a premeditated, deliberate crisis, and to add insult to injury the energy companies used their political influence to keep the Bush administration and the congressional republicans from protecting California families."

Congressional investigators Thursday subpoenaed five current and former lawyers for Enron to appear at a hearing next week on price manipulation in California's energy markets. - the LA Times.


Duck, puke, and cover

El Dorque administration officials are exploring ways to use the public's strong patriotic response to the Sept. 11 attacks to promote the teaching of civics and the obligation of citizenship in American classrooms, a U.S. official said Saturday. Greaaaaaat. I can see it now: 'the only true patriot is a republican! If yer not a republican, yer a terrist! '




Another Real President at Work

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has worked to improve U.S. relations with Cuba for more than two decades, will give it another try when he arrives Sunday at the invitation of Fidel Castro.

Wayne Smith,the chief U.S. diplomat to Havana during the Carter administration, said he didn't expect "any miracles." But he said "Carter cannot achieve less than (President) Bush has, which has been zero."


'Bein' preznit is - hic! -hard!
Pass me that bottla pretzals, wouldja? Hic!'


Cool Stuff : Far below the city streets of Paris, in the quiet, damp darkness, seven million Parisians lie motionless. Their skeletons, long since dis-interred from the churchyard graves their survivors left them in, are neatly stacked and aligned to form the walls of nearly one kilometer of walking passage.

Welcome to the Denfert-Rochereau Ossuary -- The Empire of the Dead. Take the Underground Paris tour and visit the quarries, catacombs and ossuaries, and find your next address in case that smirking moron fixes another election!